Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice to Will Baines of Democratic and Scrutiny Services and supplied the text (contact details below) by midday on Tuesday 6 June, three working days before the day of the meeting. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item. Members of the public who have given notice will be invited to speak:-
· at this point in the meeting if their questions/statements relate to matters which are not otherwise on the Agenda (subject to an overall time limit of 30 minutes);
· when the relevant Agenda item is being considered if they wish to speak on a matter which is on the Agenda for this meeting.
If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Chairman who will instruct anyone who may be taking a recording to cease while you speak.
Minutes:
Since all three of the following questions concerned Item 9, Environment Agency – bathing water quality update, they were presented at the start of item 9. The answers to the questions were then covered in the presentation by the Environment Agency.
Guy Smith
It is difficult to comprehend that Scarborough established itself as Britain’s oldest seaside resort and people travelled to it to take the Spa water and bathe in the south bay for medicinal purposes and we have such adverse publicity to our tourist industry today.
Several years ago the Scarborough Borough Council Cabinet member for environmental issues identified a number of factors allegedly contributing to the poor water quality. He was interviewed on Yorkshire Coast radio and clearly identified these to be litter, seabird fouling, dog fouling and donkey fouling. It was subsequently noted that the Environment Agency laboratory had received samples of donkey faeces from the donkey sanctuary in Devon and no traces whatsoever, were found in the South Bay water. No retraction was ever given by him. Following this, a few years ago, I recall laboratory technicians were taking half hour test samples every day from 1 May to 30 September. I believe they were commissioned to do this by the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water. Their van was parked daily behind the lifeboat house on West Pier. Please can you tell me if the information retrieved from their investigations made any observations and conclusions, as I cannot remember seeing any subsequent reference to their findings. Please could you also clarify what effect the weather has on results.
Steve Crawford
I run a surf hire and lesson business from the Spa on South Bay. I've been made redundant because of the current issue with water quality and the red/ no flags state of the bay and haven't been able to work since the 6th May. Why have you not made Yorkshire Water accountable for their repeated failures? Microbial spot testing of bacteria found in the bay proved the source was the industrial waste. Your own data has proven that South Bay will never achieve a good status whilst this persists. How can a licence be given to an outfall pipe that was known to be a source of test positive bacteria? This was a wholly avoidable situation. I've spoken about this with the council, the EA and Yorkshire Water on numerous occasions over the years and they are fully aware of the problems. Mike Cockerill, who was a Scarborough Borough Councillor involved with water quality was as exasperated as I am . He acknowledged that the Council had no direct responsibility for the bathing water quality but supported the work of the agencies who did have responsibility, primarily the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water, and lamented that the good working relationship between the Council and these agencies had seen a decline.
Jean Spink
How regularly are the Environment Agency sampling the water quality at South Bay Beach and does this sampling cover testing for anti-microbial/ antibiotic resistant bacteria?